


sing me, mercy

by meritmut



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: F/M, an epilogue to Episode 1.06, shh let me have this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-19
Updated: 2013-10-19
Packaged: 2017-12-29 21:11:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1010145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meritmut/pseuds/meritmut
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Who?” he asks softly. “Who had the gun, Finn?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	sing me, mercy

He goes by morning to the street by her flat, curves himself to the shadowed wall below and gives a long moment to simply watching her window. Wonders if she might still be up there, packing her things into a case and slipping out onto the street to escape from this mess, her own damn mess and his too.

Today, she’d said, she is heading to London. She gave him a week to choose; he gives himself three days to forgive, but Tommy’s current position haunting the street of her address suggests the time is no longer needed. If he really is standing here now under this grey archway, gazing up as if hoping to see her willowy form flitting about her room beyond the curtain…if it really is so hard to let her go then the choice is no longer his, and it’s been made already.

He doesn’t stay long, noting the dark hollow of her window and the utter stillness of the flat and rolling his eyes at his own sentimentality. There’s no one left in there, and it seems fitting. No need to linger. The shadows claim him like one of their own as he departs.

He beats Finn home by mere seconds, the boy clattering in after him – only to jerk to a halt with a look of apprehension on his face as he takes in the sight of Tommy slouched at the head of the table, staring at the opposite wall and never looking so uncomfortable in his natural seat as he does now. Distracted, the elder brother barely notices the younger’s entrance, but Finn approaches with his hat in his little fists and waits.

He might be all of eleven years old but he knows to wait, when it comes to Shelbys and bad news.

“’Tis it?” Tommy’s voice is gruffer than usual, quieter. _Sadder_ , Finn thinks.

“Arthur’s bar girl…” the boy starts, “your Grace.”

Tommy doesn’t even flinch at the sound of her name, but something in him turns cold.

“What, Finn?”

“Coppers got her. Down at the station, I ‘eard them saying in the Garrison. He had a gun…”

Finn falls silent at the slight tightening in his brother’s jaw, the way his hand clenches on the table as if tightening around an invisible neck. His knuckles are taut white and his eyes turned to bitter anger when he lifts them to focus on his little brother.

“Who?” he asks softly. “Who had the gun, Finn?”

.

They put her in the passenger lounge, laid her out on one of the benches with a blanket and a folded coat beneath her head. Keep her warm, someone mutters, comfortable, as if she could care.

The police are long since gone – they’d arrived within moments, Moss and his fellows assuring the frantic witnesses that they would deal with this internal affair, but they left her behind. Someone suggested they call a doctor to the scene but it was argued that the injured party in this instance is already gone, no need to summon one to the station.

And so she lies, amid voices and the fading police whistles, until the room falls silent and she is left alone.

.

He doesn’t call his brothers for this. Finn comes, but only because he can’t be kept at home and as the bringer of news he feels owed this. Tommy leaves the rest of the blinders to themselves. This is for him to finish.

.

They think she is in shock, which is altogether better than the alternative, but shock doesn’t seem the right word to describe it. Since Campbell had levelled the gun at her head the world had seemed to slow down to a crawl and it still has yet to pick up pace: she rests in the lounge, heart pounding, with the blanket around her shoulders because it’s so cold now. Cold, ever since she’d looked into the eyes of the man pointing the pistol between her own, and found nothing to suggest he was ever a man she knew.

 _Fool, Grace,_ she curses herself.

He’s gone, now. She remembers the single gunshot that had torn through Campbell’s shoulder and sent his weapon spinning away, the pain and shock in his own features as from nowhere Sergeant Moss had come to haul his wounded superior away.

(One shot. Non-lethal. Precise. Moss had known what he was about. Campbell will recover and by that time Grace will be gone. Long gone, too far for him to find her.)

The bullet had scraped her too; grazed the slope of her shoulder and quite ruined her travelling suit. With the panic and confusion all around her that had been the only thought to make it through the haze, that she can never wear this jacket or blouse again – a silly consideration. Who cares about a jacket?

And yet, she clings to it because it is the only thing that doesn’t hurt to think about. Everything else just brings her back to him.

Who knows how long she sits, wild-eyed thousand yard stare sinking into the tiled floor as the blood dries on her arm and the voices outside resume their more everyday pattern, the sound of a door opening and closing nearby briefly letting a clearer wave of chatter through into Grace’s haven. There’s no mess out there on the platforms. The disaster has been contained to this room and her own thudding heart.

Easy to forget what you can’t see.

_If only._

She should leave, find herself somewhere to spend the night before heading to the capital tomorrow, but she has nowhere to go: her train is long gone, her flat’s lease ended…for a moment she wonders if maybe she could stay here, if anyone would notice if she tried. She knows how to make herself invisible.

“Grace?”

She frowns. When did someone come in? The door had opened, but she doesn’t recall hearing footsteps…

She can hear them now, though, coming closer as the one who’d uttered her name crosses the room toward her. Quiet footsteps, hasty with urgency, and then he’s crouching before her.

“Grace, look at me,” his voice is gentle and rough all at once, one of the many implausible contradictions she’s grown to love about him and thought she might miss forever. He lifts a hand to her jaw and tilts her head so she can’t escape his gaze, those keen eyes like winter light searching hers for an answer.

“Why are you here?” she murmurs, and she can’t tell if it’s relief in his face or pain.

“Never mind,” mutters Tommy as his eyes find her shoulder and narrow. Without a word he drifts his fingertips over the torn fabric, examining the neat scoring wound – Grace winces faintly more out of reflex than actual hurt, turning her face from him to stare at the wall again. Before Campbell had turned up she’d thought of nothing but seeing Tommy’s face once more, and now…now she can barely look at him.

“Grace…”

His voice is so shattered, so hoarse then, hard to ignore and so against her judgment and her sense Grace looks back to him. Meets his gaze and finds a little bravery in his refusal to let her look away again. Slowly, hesitantly she lifts one hand hand to place it on his right shoulder and curls her fingers about his collar so lightly, so carefully, in case he moves away from the contact.

But he doesn’t, and so she leans in.

He meets her halfway, lets her rest her forehead against his for a moment and breaths her name into her skin, _Grace, Grace_ , and she’s whispering his name too and he buries his face in her good shoulder as she encloses him in her arms and holds him to her now, wishing she’d done it last time.

She can feel the strength of his fingers along her spine, an edge of relieved laughter shaking him beneath her arms as he lifts himself again to look her in the eyes and brush a fleeting kiss over her brow. The laughter is enough to bring a smile to her features as she kisses him sweetly.

“Here it comes,” he echoes something she thinks might have passed her lips once. “Grace…”

_I love you._

She stills in his arms and searches his face sharply. Words like that are promises, and there’ve been too many broken lately.

And so, rather than risk another break, Grace silences him with a kiss. His hands rise to skim along her jaw and she might still be in shock - or perhaps she’s simply dreaming - but in the desperate silence of a wordless moment, she can hear him say it anyway.


End file.
